Feedback - New user 1/30/2017

Greetings all,

New user here, just started playing on 1/27/2017 post R38 and I must say that I am impressed. My initial experience has been pleasant and more importantly I've been having fun. Reminds me very much of my initial experience in EQ, a game I played for many, many years.

Anyways, just a little feedback for the DEVS after a few days of playing, in no particular order. Please forgive me if these have been covered previously, as I said I'm new here.

1. After killing an animal and then clicking the body to skin it (for lack of a better term) my character does a little walkabout before actually kneeling down to start the process. It would certainly make sense if I was X distance away from the dead animal. However, after killing 3 bears for instance and they are quite literally almost on top of each other, doing the little walkabout before each skinning process is very annoying and time consuming. Its almost like you have to be facing and/or approaching the body from a specific direction before the skinning process can begin, that or the walkabout is a part of the skinning animation. Is there anyway this can be eliminated? Perhaps a distance check from your character to the corpse and if within a specific distance then no walkabout animation, just kneel down and start skinning? I was actually prevented from collecting resources from some dead animals when they were killed very close to an object such as a large rock or tree, I would start the walkabout but then never kneel down to start skinning, unable to recover the resources.

This also seems to apply when using crafting stations, as I would click on one of them and then do this little walk thing before actually starting to use the crafting station, I mean, I could at least understand it when attempting to access the station from behind (although IMO you should be able to do that) but moving 3 steps to the right before starting to craft? Once again, in a few different POTs an improperly placed station would simply not let me use it, I would start the walk and then nothing. I will admit the stations were very close together and sort of crammed under a tent, but still the players inability to properly place a station should not dictate if it can be used or not.

2. Sound is very good and the effects are wonderful, however maybe tone down certain sounds so that they only affect a very short distance. An example would be the drunk (jethro or something like that) located at the INN in SOLTOWN. I could clearly hear him barfing (over and over and over, etc.) when I was standing outside of the city gates. Just a suggestion but maybe only those inside the INN should be affected by his rather annoying sounds as well as other sounds that tend to distract rather that help.

3. Aggro seems to be a bit off for various MOBS throughout the game. Bears and small wolf spiders for instance aggro as soon as I'm in bow range, sometimes it seems when I'm not in bow range, regardless of if they are facing me or not. Bandits and thugs seem a little better because sometimes I could actually get a shot off at one when approaching them from behind (but this may have been because they just spawned.) Skeletons seem to have the same aggro as the previously mentioned bears and spiders. Surely, there must be some way to change it up a bit rather than have everything simply charge at you as soon as you are in range?

4. I like the journal, but I DO NOT like not being able to remember who/where I got the intitial quest from, so that when it's finished I can complete it. I mean, if I'm taking the time to write down what the quest is in my journal, doesn't it make sense that I'd write down the name of the person that gave it to me and where they live? For example, one quest I got was something like: "Ashton wants me to find a heirloom that he left on soltown bridge when it was attacked by undead and return it to him." Great info! I got his name and what he wants me to find, then I went off and got a bunch of other quests, visited a couple of other locations and got sidetracked by about million different things I saw and promptly forgot where this guy was so I could return his "Grandma's Recipes." Would have been much better if the journal would have said "Ashton IN SOLTOWN wants me to find a heirloom that he left on soltown bridge when it was attacked by undead and return it to him." Or even underneath the quest on another line "Received from Ashton in Soltown" that would at least narrow it down to the city. I'm sure others like me do not get a quest and then complete it right away, usually I get numerous quests, sometimes from different locations and it can get pretty messy trying to keep them straight, that's what the journal should do.

None of the above are game breaking IMO, but they would go along way toward immersion and feel for the game itself.

There were a number of other issues with quests not completing, etc. (the aforementioned barfing guys love poem quest for one, I could not initiate a conversation window with the barmaid to save my life) but I'm sure you're working on those things.

That's it for now, but I'll try and keep listing stuff as I find it.

Overall, it looks very good so far, once the rest of the towns, quests and NPC's are active I think its a winner and something I can enjoy for quite sometime.

Thanks!

 

Welcome!

Spiders are directly connected to the scene Navmesh and they know where you are at all times. They see in code. Beware!

 

Greetings Temerian, welcome to Shroud of the Avatar! Thank you for the kind feedback, we greatly appreciate it and are looking this over now!

 

Hello Temerian.

 

Welcome Temerian and thank you for taking the time to write your feedback from being a new player. If I can help anytime let me know by adding me to your friends list using the 'f' key and right clicking my name to whisper. The /l will take you back to local chat. Also we have emotes under the 'o' key and you can be taught more from other players and also get some from NPCs. The same goes for crafting recipes that can be discovered in your adventures and other players can teach you the teachable ones . I am Majoria in game. Happy adventures and *cheers*

 

Welcome to the game! I really agree with the skinning/harvesting point you make. One moment you're playing your avatar, the next moment you turn into a robot who's trying to skin

 

Well said, I feel 100% the same way on each of these and I've been around for a year

I really hate having to walk around all resource nods in this game, they all only have one entry point, they should have 4.

I think all of them are on the list for pass overs before release.

 

The barmaid and any merchant type npc that has a trade window open up can be chatted with by clicking on the "hello" in your chatbox from when they greet you. They all do that when you click on them to trade.